Memory reports as state descriptions: an Iranian perspective

Abstract This paper investigates the semantic properties of memory reports in the Iranian languages Persian and Sorani Kurdish. In these languages, memory predicates are constructed out of a noun meaning ‘memory,’ the copula, and a locative preposition. I demonstrate that memory predicates in these languages pass diagnostics for abstract state predicates, distinguishing them from imagination reports, to which memory reports have been compared in the recent philosophical and linguistic literature. Building on decompositional approaches to attitude predicates, I develop a novel compositional semantics for memory predicates in these languages that accounts for their form, stativity, and differences from imagination predicates. This work contributes to the growing literature on the semantics of memory reports in natural language cross-linguistically, and discusses implications for the relationship between natural language semantics and the philosophy of memory.